We did a quick review of Romans -- how Jewish Christains had been expelled from Rome under Claudius and were now coming back under Nero, to find their church taken over by Gentiles. Perhaps Paul was requested to write to them to ease the situation; certainly he goes into the status of Gentile and Jewish Christians at great length.
Chapter 11 is dense and difficult to follow, but faced with the argument that people behave in accordance with the way they were made by God, Paul can only respond with an argument of authority -- the same argument used in the Book of Job.
We looked at the history of the issue as to whether Gentile Christians should obey the Mosaic Law :
In the Old Testament, God agrees to a series of "deals":
Man Application Requirements Benefits Reference
Noah Universal No murder No More Floods Genesis 9
No meat containing blood
Abram All nations One God - circumcision No human sacrifice
(Gen 12:3) Ancestor of many nations Genesis 17
Moses Hebrews Follow the detailed code Keep the Land
e.g. Kosher foods
Restricted marriage
What should apply to Gentile Christians? According to Acts, the Jerusalem Conference, which might have been expected to be in favour of full Mosaic observance, in fact decided to impose only four regulations; Eat nothing strangled, Eat no blood, Eat no food offered to idols, be chaste. Paul seems to have remembered only two of these --
Nevertheless, Acts contains a history of conflict over how far the Mosaic law apoplied; "men sent from James" apparently went to the churches insisting on circumcision. Paul relaxed the rules over food, suggesting a "don't ask, don't tell" policy (I Corinthians 10:27) He was furious with the Christians who adopted circumcision, saying that if they did this, Christ would be of no value to them (I Corinthians 5:2 ). He wrote several diatribes aganist the (Mosaic) Law, writing that the Law actually suggested sins that the believer might then adopt (Romans 7:7-11).